Finally, the radio locked onto a station. I recognized
the host as a famous conspiracy theorist.
“Do you ever listen to Art Bell?” I asked Jack.
“Who?”
“Oh man, this is perfect. Art Bell is an ‘ufologist’
and broadcasts out of trailer in Nevada, just on the other
side of the Funeral Mountains.”
“You mean east of Death Valley?” Jack was beginning
to grok the mythology out here and how it was inseparable
from the terrain and topography.
“East of the Rockies, you’re on with Art
Bell. Go caller.”
“Yeah Art, I just want to say that I don’t
believe for a minute that Thompson stuck a gun in his mouth
and pulled the trigger. It just wasn’t his style.”
“Who are they talking about?” Jack asked.
“I dunno. Probably some engineer from Area 51 who
offed himself in Vegas.”
“Well sir, I cannot comment, as news reports
are still trickling in. I do know that Thompson’s
health has not been good recently, and that may have influenced
the cause of his death.”
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Bell fielded a few more calls, many blurbing his appearance
on some investigative news show on ABC-TV about “Ufology”
as he called it, and one about some modern corollary of
Schrödinger’s Cat that involved the airports
of Miami and Denver, a lost pet and a car crash in Florida.
Then Bell went off on Biblical screed-cum-soliloquy about
how tonight’s torrential pounding of desert soil in
Noah-like quantities while Seattle is in a drought may or
may not be a harbinger of End Times.
Jack was silent. Behind his sunglasses, he appeared to
be bumming.
The station broke for news – it was now 10:30 at
night, we had been driving for hours and we still had a
tough gauntlet of bad road and bad rain ahead – when
we realized who the “Thompson” was.
“Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide tonight
in his home in Woody Creek, Colorado…”
and I didn’t really hear the rest of the news story.
It rained all the way into Los Angeles. When I pulled into
my driveway, my knuckles were white as stone. That may have
been the color of my heart also.
All I know is that through the wind and the rain and the
sinkholes, I didn’t blink for five hours. I passed
out and dreamt of death. 
(Cole Coonce is the author of INFINITY OVER ZERO: MEDITATIONS
ON MAXIMUM VELOCITY and COME DOWN FROM THE HILLS AND MAKE
MY BABY. More of his work can be found on www.kerosenebomb.com)
